The Early Years at a Crossroads: Where Has Child Development Gone?

By Dr. Aaron Bradbury

There comes a point where you stop and ask yourself, what are we doing to our youngest children?

Right now, I genuinely believe the early years are at a crossroads. On one side, we have decades of knowledge, research, and practice grounded in child development, understanding how children grow, learn, and flourish through play, relationships, and experience. On the other, we have a policy agenda that continues to narrow childhood into checklists: school readiness, writing, phonics, GLD scores, and data points that often tell us more about adult expectations than children’s lived realities.

I despair at what is happening in our sector.

We are watching the steady erosion of what we know works, a child-centred, developmentally informed approach, replaced by targets that belong to another phase of education altogether or maybe we could even say that it does not belong in education at all. Practitioners are being asked to assess before they’ve had time to build relationships. Children are being asked to perform before they’ve had time to play. And child development, the very foundation of early years practice, has become something that is talked about, but rarely listened to.

It feels as though we’ve forgotten that learning to write begins long before a pencil is ever held, that phonics has no meaning without language and play, and that school readiness is not a checklist to be completed by July.

We are at a point where the early years must decide which road to take. Do we continue to conform to policy pressures that ignore developmental science? Or do we reclaim our professional voice, stand together, and insist that childhood itself, not just “readiness”, deserves to be at the centre?

Because this isn’t about rejecting literacy or learning; it’s about redefining how and when it happens. It’s about remembering that child development is not a “nice to have”, it is the non-negotiable foundation for everything that follows.

As practitioners, leaders, and advocates, we owe it to our children to speak up. The crossroads is here, and whichever direction we take will define the next decade of early childhood education.

In Starting Strong, I wrote that “true readiness is not a performance measure but a state of being, grounded in belonging, curiosity, and confidence.” That remains truer than ever. Our recent Play, Policy & Power report highlights this same tension, the push and pull between policy rhetoric and the lived experience of practice, and calls for a national reimagining of what early education could and should be.

Through the Child in the NOW model, we are beginning to chart that alternative route, one where relationships, play, and development come first, and where the child, not the data, leads the way.

The choice is ours. Let’s make sure we take the right road.